A new credit card called the "Labor Guarantee Card," which allows members of the public to check the status of their retirement pensions, was released yesterday.
The move was part of a thinly veiled commercial venture between the government and private companies. Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Chairman Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), who presided over the opening ceremony, said, "Today is no less momentous than the trial run of Taiwan's bullet train, which took place yesterday. The value of the high-speed rail after it has been completed next year will be around NT$480 billion; but the retirement passion will have reached over NT$1 trillion in 7 years, and this will only keep increasing."
The figures Lee cited are extrapolated from a new pension scheme that took effect this July, in which employers set aside 6 percent of employees' salaries each month.
At present, around 3.2 million members of the public have chosen the new policy.
In September, when Lee took charge of the CLA, he listed pension-fund management as one of the council's key priorities.
He had at that time lauded former CLA chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) as playing an important part in the successful implementation of the new pension scheme.
According to Vice Premier Wu Rong-yi (
Members of the public can apply for the card at either E.Sun bank, Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, Taishin Bank or Land Bank.
The card allows users to check when a monthly pension is entered, what uses the pension has been put toward and the total amount accumulated.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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